WASHINGTON — It was considered one of the largest data breaches to threaten the private information of Americans, affecting nearly half of the U.S. by some estimates. The data breach compromised the personal information of around 147 million people, as the Associated Press reports.
Federal Trade Commission Chair Joe Simons was quoted in July as saying, "Equifax failed to take basic steps that may have prevented the breach," Fox Business reports.
Equifax has now agreed to pay a settlement up to $700 million dollars to settle investigations on the state and federal level. As the Associated Press reports, claimants may be eligible for up to $20,000 in reimbursements for "losses from unauthorized charges to affected accounts, legal and other fees, credit-monitoring or identity-theft-protection services and expenses related to freezing or unfreezing credit reports."
Victims may also be able to claim $25 for every hour spent dealing with the breach, for up to 20 hours of compensation.
The FTC said, “each person who takes the money option is likely to get a very small amount. Nowhere near the $125 they could have gotten if there hadn’t been such an enormous number of claims filed.”
To submit a claim, the settlement administrator has a tool that you can use to check your eligibility. You can also go to the administrator’s website at equifaxbreachsettlement.com.
The FTC has a website of their own: www.ftc.gov/equifax.
Chi Chi Wu, an attorney at the National Consumer Law Center said it will be hard to figure out which consumers might have suffered identity theft from the breach or other consequences years down the road.
